The People of Paper

“He felt the weight of a distant force looking down on him.”

Federico de la Fe begins to sense that some being or force, located in the sky, is watching him and directing his fate. The watcher is Saturn, a stand-in for the author. This quotation points toward the metafictional nature of the book, in which the characters are not only aware of their creator but also go to war with him.

“When he felt that we were alone we stepped over the chalk line and walked toward a world built on cement.”

Little Merced narrates the moment when she and her father leave Mexico and step into California. Because they wait until no one sees them, the text implies that the two may be undocumented immigrants, not holding the proper papers. On a larger level, Little Merced and her father leave their country and culture behind them for a new life, one that will be as hard as cement.

“While there were no cockfights or wrestling arenas, the curanderos’ botanical shops, the menudo stands, and the bell towers of the Catholic churches had also pushed north, settling among the flowers and sprinkler systems.”

Although El Monte, California, is far from Las Tortugas and Guadalajara, Mexican immigrants begin pushing north into the city and bring with them the shops, customs, and language of their native lands. The number of Spanish terms in the novel increases with the increased migration of the characters, suggesting that language itself is essential in the creation of home and even reality.

“‘If your mother were here this would never have happened,’ he said then crumpled the mimeographed sheet.”

Federico blames his absent wife for his loneliness and the head lice his daughter contracts. This is the first time he has considered that the absence of a mother would affect his daughter. In addition, it demonstrates a tendency in Federico to place blame on forces or characters other than himself for his own perceived lack of freedom.

“Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Dolores Cansino in a coastal town in Jalisco, where at the age of six she sowed a plum orchard irrigated solely by salt water.”

Plascencia introduces the real-life actress Rita Hayworth into the novel, fabricating a mythical birth and upbringing for her. He blends factual information with fantasy, using magical realism to further blur the distinction between fiction and reality. He presents Rita as a creature of Hollywood, stitched together by studio publicists and plastic surgeons. He also suggests that she betrays her own origin story.

“Right now, as I say this, we are part of Saturn’s Story. Saturn owns it. We are being listened to and watched, our lives sold as entertainment.”

As Federico recruits Froggy, he identifies Saturn as the author of their stories and the one who controls them. He portrays Saturn as a kind of voyeur, someone who takes pleasure in watching other people’s most intimate encounters. That Saturn chooses to use these observations for his own emotional and financial needs is repugnant to Federico.

“Despite Apolonio’s insistence on inking only proven antidotes and ignoring the blind faith of the paisan healers, his parchment was identical to every other curandero’s book.”

Apolonio considers himself to be scientific, using control groups and keeping data from experiments. However, Plascencia reveals that his cures are the same as those of the curanderos Apolonio disdains. The connection between the scientific method and folk medicine mirrors the connection between realism and magical realism and suggests that even the most scientific medical procedures may be more art than science.

“Pío-Pío descended from one of the flocks that had willingly left the Garden in pursuit of Eve.”

Pío-Pío is one of the Oaxacan songbirds who gives solace to grieving men. The reference to Eve and the Garden is a call back to the Prologue, which begins with a mention of the creation of Eve. It emphasizes that the biblical creation story as related by Genesis and by Milton’s Paradise Lost provides an important framework for the novel.

“But there are forces that don’t let you turn back and undo things, because to do so would be to deny what is already in motion, to unwrite and erase passages, to shorten the arc of a story you don’t own.”

Sandra’s statement is a comment on the power of a storyteller to do what they want with their characters, noting that characters have no power to rewrite their own stories. At the same time, the statement reveals the metafictional nature of The People of Paper. The author of a novel has complete control over the plot, setting, structure, and characters. It is the nature of fiction that it is owned by the author, not by the characters.

“Someone has to watch over us. I don’t want to look up at the sky and think that nothing is up there. I want to know that something is watching me.”

Although a member of the EMF, Smiley does not believe in the war against Saturn, preferring to believe that something larger than himself is taking care of him and that life is not random. It is ironic that Smiley is the one to discover that Salvador Plascencia is writing the novel he appears in because it means that someone truly is watching over him.

“I once had a wife. She had twenty-two birth marks and a sneeze that sounded as if it were blown through a flute and Saturn drove her away, just so there would be this story. So that I would venture out from Las Tortugas and he could follow and mock me.”

Federico’s words to Smiley reveal that he has shifted blame away from himself and his own bed-wetting as the cause for Merced’s abandonment, and he now blames Saturn for her absence. At the metafictional level, this view is accurate because it is always the writer who is the source of sorrow, pain, and loss in a novel.

“Saturn’s real name is Salvador Plascencia. Salvador Plascencia de Gonzales, to be exact, though he dropped his maternal name long ago.”

Apolonio reveals Saturn’s true identity to Smiley. In reality, Plascencia is the author of the novel. However, within the text of the novel, once he is identified, he becomes yet another fictional character, although one that shares many details of his life with the real life of the author. The novel becomes increasingly metafictional with the entrance of Salvador, and the boundary between reality and fiction becomes increasingly blurred.

“But when I came to Saturn he was no longer in control. He did not have the foresight to see that I was coming, nor did he care. He had surrendered the story and his power as narrator.”

When Smiley punches through the sky and arrives at Saturn’s home, he is surprised that as an omniscient narrator, Saturn does not know Smiley is coming. Smiley’s assertion that Saturn has lost control of the story is an example of metafiction. While it might be true that the fictional Salvador has been conquered by his characters and given up on the narration, in reality, Plascencia has written this scene in the book and therefore continues to control the narration.

“He promised all those things men promise when they are far away and can feel the phone lines stretched too tight, the wires and cables rapidly unraveling from their braids, snapping, recoiling, collapsing the poles along the way.”

Saturn, living far away from Liz and terrified that she will leave him, makes many promises to her. However, communication, here symbolized by the telephone lines, fails. Plascencia uses the imagery of collapse to represent the loss of connection between his character of Salvador and his lover, Liz.

“Saturn knew it was on account of the war against EMF that she had left. It was impossible to be loyal to a war commander who was always away.”

When Saturn returns to El Monte and discovers that Liz has left, he falls into a deep depression. His anger subsided, he now knows that he was the cause of Liz’s departure, and he also learns that Liz has left him for another man.

“And like Liz, Merced had surrendered to the voice and bristled face of another.”

Although Federico believes that Liz has left him because he wets the bed, Saturn knows that it is because she left him for another man, just as Liz did.

“It was there, standing above the Dominoes—an absurd game where the greatest value ended in loss, […] Smiley resigned.”

Smiley, having the knowledge of Saturn’s identity, goes to watch Federico play dominoes with others of the EMF. Recognizing the absurdity of the game and, by extension, the absurdity of trying to escape from their own author, Smiley resigns from the EMF.

“The Baby Nostradamus had the power to undercut Saturn by prematurely disclosing information and sabotaging the whole of the novel. Ending everything here by simply listing the character fates […] A terrorism of summation, prematurely bringing everything forward.”

In a metaphysical statement, Plascencia ironically blacks out Baby Nostradamus’s text so that no details are given away too early. As much as Plascencia wants to finish his book, he also does not want to give in to the “terrorism of summation,” or the fear of summing up without developing plot or characters.

“Antonio’s creation, which had endured a thunderous rainstorm, the saliva from hundreds of lips, and the ensuring spite of old lovers, was undone by an unfastened seat belt and a shattered windscreen.”

These lines describe the death of Merced. Significantly, she is unnamed in these lines and is referred to only as Antonio’s creation. Plascencia demonstrates how easily a creation can be destroyed by a narrator, using only words.

“But we have discovered an allergy to lead, and learned that history cannot be fought with sealed lips, that the only way to stop Saturn is through our own voice.”

Although Federico and the EMF have believed that they can defeat Saturn by hiding from him, Froggy knows that silence is not an effective weapon and that they must raise their voices against Saturn. The statement implies that colonized people need to speak out against the history written by their colonizers and tell their own stories.

“But when Sandra unknowingly knocked on the door if she whose name was once cited on the dedication page, Saturn violated the most important tenet of war: allowing love to enter his mind.”

Saturn’s anger has subsided, and he begins to think about Liz with love, rather than hatred and rage. Instead of continuing to write the story of The People of Paper, he allows himself to think about how much he loved Liz and begins to write her a love letter, another piece of paper, one conceived not in battle but in hopes of reconciliation.

“I fled the town of El Derramadero, a town named after decay, where everything fell apart.”

The words “everything fell apart” intertextually allude to the novel Things Fall Apart by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. The novel describes pre-colonial life in Nigeria and the consequences of white European colonization on the country and in Africa. The allusion aligns Plascencia’s novel with Achebe’s description of the degradation caused by colonialism.

“This was the fate of women who knew too much, women who upset the pride of Saturn. Because ultimately, Saturn is a tyrant, commanding the story where he wants to go.”

Cameroon’s discovery that she has been killed by the author of The People of Paper is a prime example of metafiction, as is her commentary on the power of the storyteller to shape the narration of a story according to their own whims. In this case, however, she exerts her own power by reappearing in the story after she has been erased by the primary narrator and charging Saturn with tyranny.